To implode about DH ruining my clothes every fucking week.

[Aplatterofpuss]

DH is an Oxbridge educated 50 year old man with a good job in computer programming.
We have been married for 10 years.
He gets the mental load stuff and does the lion’s share of the domestic stuff during the week as I’m a teacher and work longer hours.

I have taught him how to do the laundry 450 bazillion times. I have shown him. I have told him. We have hammered it out in couples therapy that it’s not an exclusively female skill-set to be able to simply wash plain whites, light colours, dark colours in batches, read the care labels on everything and basically treat all the clothes as if they’re his musical equipment.

After thrashing this out in therapy a few weeks ago and him apologising profusely and insisting he does care and is sorry, I came home last weekend to him having washed coloured items with whites rendering many of my things grey and ruined. I was angry. It was not nice.

We again, talked about it. He blamed me because he’s found some bits on the floor by the washing machine and ASSUMED that they were sorted by me so just bunged them all in together.

This Saturday, I woke up, separated ALL of the washing in to separate piles on the landing, put the dark wash on and went to leave the house. DH asked me if the laundry on the landing had been sorted by me and I said yes.

When I returned, I emptied the fucking washing machine to find lots of my white clothes ruined by the fact that he’d put blue tea towels, multicoloured teatowels and white and blue towels in with my pure white knickers and tops.

I told him I was annoyed and that he must be doing this because they’re not his belongings.
I said that he needed to pay me back for my damaged clothes and that if I decided to put his laptop in the dishwasher and insist I did care and I didn’t mean to damage it he would be furious. He said it was obviously not the same thing and was, again, very sorry.

I amso so so angry.

Honestly, I'm leaning towards your being very precious. I just can't imagine how many clothes you have that are dying whites, it just never happens when I mix or accidentally mix clothes. Are they truly really grey?

Can’t you just agree a different split of labour so it’s still the same in terms of time/effort but he agrees not touch the washing machine? Or his/hers washing backets so you each do your own? My DH is useless at laundry. I couldn’t imagine taking it to couples therapy. Instead he does the dishwasher and the cat’s litter box. Is there more going on?

I get it's annoying for the same thing to keep happening, regardless of what it is.

My suggestion would be do your own washing.

But I am puzzled why this keeps happening anyway. I usually separate whites/lights from dark, but not always, and I honestly don't have an issue. The only time I did, it was because there was a new coloured item being washed for the first time.

Wash your own clothes and assign him a different task as replacement.

How about you pull your weight with the chores and mental load instead of leaving the majority up to him? You could, at the very least, take responsibility for the laundry.

How can you be bothered to care about this?

This is my thinking too.

How did you end up in counselling? What’s going on in the rest of the relationship?

If you’re so fussy wash your own clothes. He can do different chores that you aren’t as particular about.

Different baskets for different wash cycles would alleviate a lot of this. Is there a reason why he is in charge of protecting your delicate clothes that can't handle a standard, mixed wash load? But if you are in therapy about it, it does seem a far larger issue than laundry.

Sounds like strategic incompetence.

I’d there a job he can do/take over if you do all the washing?

Or as PP suggested you each do your own (although I suspect he will manage to accidentally still fuck that up)

I know its not the point but colour catchers are great.

Your clothes are ruined, really? That seems unlikely.

You don't think you are massively overreacting?

This. I never separate washing and I've hardly ever bothered to read a label.

Separate baskets.....done

Does he have respect for you in other areas op?

Blue towels with white clothes?

Virtually guaranteed to ruin them

Towels are very rarely colour-fast

Even after a number of washes

Get him a box of colour catcher, I find it really works.

Yanbu as you have asked him several times and he is still messing it up.

Yab a bit u though to be so precious about whites. I have never separated washing in my life.

If you are in couples therapy presumably there is a lot more going on??

I wash my clothes and DH washes his. Works for us and means my clothes are actually clean and not crammed into a massively overfull washing machine.

Hit him in his pocket and make him have laundry collected by a cleaning service, which he solely pays for, if it’s his chore to do, it needs to be done by whichever means he does it.

Either do the task properly or give a categorical no.

It seems to me you have a passive aggressive man who is reluctant to say “no” to you.

Some people seek revenge for a perceived slight by frustrating you ad nauseam on purpose.

I had to leave a specimen like this.

It's not the mixing of the clothes
It's the addition of the towels

If he’s using a hot wash as well as mixing colours it will be ruining the clothes. Some fabrics can’t stand high temps.
It does sound like weaponised incompetence as I shove almost everything on a 20 degree quick wash and it comes out fine.
Is he wrecking his clothes as well?
Net curtain whitener works well to restore whites

Wash your own clothes, you don’t work that many hours. Takes mins to shove it in the machine and switch it on.

YANBU that it's simple enough to separate white clothes from the rest.

But there seems to be a lot more going on here... I doubt that you're in couples therapy solely due to laundry.